Corn syrup producers want sweeter name: corn sugar

View full sizeAssociated PressThis undated television advertisement provided by The Corn Refiners Association, shows a corn maze shaped like a question mark. The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to change their image with a new name: corn sugar.Â The Corn Refiners Association is filing an application with the Food and Drug Administration Tuesday to get "corn sugar" approved as an alternative name for food labels.

NEW YORK -- The makers of high fructose corn syrup want to sweeten its image with a new name: corn sugar.

The
Corn Refiners Association applied Tuesday to the federal government for
permission to use the name on food labels. The group hopes a new name
will ease confusion about the sweetener, which is used in soft drinks,
bread, cereal and other products.

Americans' consumption of corn
syrup has fallen to a 20-year low on consumer concerns that it is more
harmful or more likely to cause obesity than ordinary sugar, perceptions
for which there is little scientific evidence.

However, some
scientists have linked consumption of full-calorie soda -- the vast
majority of which is sweetened with high fructose corn syrup -- to
obesity.

The Food and Drug Administration could take two years to
decide on the name, but that's not stopping the industry from using the
term now in advertising.

There's a new online marketing campaign
at www.cornsugar.com and on television. Two new commercials try to
alleviate shopper confusion, showing people who say they now understand
that "whether it's corn sugar or cane sugar, your body can't tell the
difference. Sugar is sugar."

Renaming products has succeeded
before. For example, low eurcic acid rapeseed oil became much more
popular after becoming "canola oil" in 1988. Prunes tried to shed a
stodgy image by becoming "dried plums" in 2000.

The new name would help people understand the sweetener, said Audrae Erickson, president of the Washington-based group.

"It has been highly disparaged and highly misunderstood," she said. She declined to say how much the campaign costs.

Sugar
and high fructose corn syrup are nutritionally the same, and there's no
evidence that the sweetener is any worse for the body than sugar, said
Michael Jacobson, executive director of the Center for Science in the
Public Interest. The bottom line is people should consume less of all
sugars, Jacobson said.

"Soda pop sweetened with sugar is every bit
as conducive to obesity as soda pop sweetened with high fructose corn
syrup," he said.

The American Medical Association says there's not
enough evidence yet to restrict the use of high fructose corn syrup,
although it wants more research.

Still, Americans increasingly are
blaming high fructose corn syrup and avoiding it. First lady Michelle
Obama has said she does not want her daughters eating it.

Parents
such as Joan Leib scan ingredient labels and will not buy anything with
it. The mother of two in Somerville, Mass., has been avoiding the
sweetener for about a year to reduce sweeteners in her family's diet.

"I
found it in things that you would never think needed it, or should have
it," said Leib, 36. "I found it in jars of pickles, in English muffins
and bread. Why do we need extra sweeteners?"

Many companies are
responding by removing it from their products. Last month, Sara Lee
switched to sugar in two of its breads. Gatorade, Snapple and Hunt's
Ketchup very publicly switched to sugar in the past two years.

The
average American ate 35.7 pounds of high fructose corn syrup last year,
according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. That's down 21 percent
from 45.4 pounds 10 years before.

Cane and beet sugar, meanwhile,
have hovered around 44 pounds per person per year since the mid-1980s,
after falling rapidly in the 1970s, when high fructose corn syrup -- a
cheaper alternative to sugar -- gained favor with soft drink makers.

With
sales falling in the U.S., the industry is growing in emerging markets
like Mexico, and revenue has been steady at $3 billion to $4 billion a
year, said Credit Suisse senior analyst Robert Moskow. There are five
manufacturers in the U.S.: Archer Daniels Midland Inc., Corn Products
International, Cargill, Roquette America, and Tate & Lyle.

Corn refiners say their new name better describes the sweetener.

"The
name 'corn sugar' more accurately reflects the source of the food
(corn), identifies the basic nature of the food (a sugar), and discloses
the food's function (a sweetener)," the petition said.

Will shoppers swallow the new name?

The
public is skeptical, so the move will be met with criticism, said Tim
Calkins, a marketing professor at Kellogg School of Management at
Northwestern University.

"This isn't all that much different from
any of the negative brands trying to embrace new brand names," he said,
adding the change is similar to what ValuJet -- whose name was tarnished
by a deadly crash in 1996 -- did when it bought AirTran's fleet and took
on its name.

"They're not saying this is a healthy vitamin, or
health product," he said. "They're just trying to move away from the
negative associations."

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